Little Blue Champion - The Next Generation of Fighters (Patreon Magazine) (Patreon)

I tug on the edge of my straw mat as Kevin and I try to align it away from a hanging bag in the back of the Thapae Stadium. As I’m pulling, the edge gets near to a pair of black shoes, the heels of them dented down from their wearer not putting their foot entirely into the show, but allowing their heels to fold the backs down to be like slippers. An older man appears and picks up the shoes as I start to put my bag down on the mat. He’s mildly irritated, but not by our mat being near the shoes so much as the shoes being something he had to come and get. As my eyes track him back to his mat, which is directly behind ours, I see that he and his team are preparing a little girl to fight. Immediately I check the program and see that there’s a “Lady” fight, second on the program, at 102 lbs. I quickly scan the small group in this back area and find her opponent, a tall and rail-thin young “tween,” the exact opposite from the little girl on the mat by me, who is round and short. My heart kind of sinks. It looks like a terrible match up.

There crowd grows while I’m not looking and by the time these young fighters are entering the ring, there’s a good group of gamblers in the corner of the ring as well. I duck between them, offering hellos to those who I recognize and a polite “yes, I’m fighting later,” and a point to the bottom of the program for those who have to squint and pull the paper away from their straining eyes to try to read it. I decide to take a seat right up against the ring, between the red corner and the gamblers’ corner, where no judges sit. The rail-thin girl is in the red corner, with a gym I know and whose older, top fighters have fought against several times. But all their female fighters are pretty, and most of them are like her: tall, fair skinned (much-esteemed in Thailand), long hair and with a kind of cool princess-vibe. I'm guessing that this was maybe only the 3rd or 4th fight for either fighter, the next generation of Thai female fighters of an already thriving Chiang Mai fight scene. If they continue on they could end up with 50, 70 or over 100 fights in their career. But this is the beginning. The blue corner, the one who got ready near me, is wearing a smart little sports bra that has complicated straps in order to be fashionable, but they slide off her round little shoulders and she keeps shrugging to try to right them. It doesn’t work. She’s short and doughy, dark complexion and a kind of lack of awareness of her body that is more child-like than her princess-vibe opponent. As the two begin their Ram Muay, the announcer says in Thai that they weighed in the same, which I guess might be reasonable enough with the height difference. The princess finishes her Ram Muay quickly, but the doughy one has a somewhat elaborate one, which is long enough that it betrays her lack of experience in actually performing it (she’s definitely rehearsed it), but she hits the right points, popping her leg in the air much more earnestly than adroitly. I love her.

The bell sounds and the fight starts and within moments my little doughy champion has her head tilted to the side as she stalks around, bopping her hands in rhythm. There was a kid I trained with years ago, at a gym back in New Jersey who did this. He’d put his hands up and tilt his head over to the side, like he was holding a phone with his shoulder. It was a thing. Ray Valez, the coach, would walk over and use his hands around the kid’s head like he was palming a basketball to pull it back up to the center, but within a few seconds the head would just drip back over to the side, like a slumping stuffed animal. I loved that kid, too, so I feel thrilled to see this little girl doing the same thing. She stares at her opponent’s legs before kicking at them – also a lack of experience but agonizingly cute. But she’s sincere and when she throws something, she throws it. The princess not so much. She keeps a lot of distance but is hesitant to initiate. When they finally grab each other for the clinch, the princess points her long knees into the belly of the round one and it looks bad for her. This straight-kneed attack becomes characteristic of many tall, long female fighters in the North, something she'll grow into. But a cheer erupts from me, without me even realizing it, when the little one wraps her arms around the tall one’s waist and just bulldozes her into the ropes, breaking the composition of beauty. The exchange is over quickly as the ref breaks them, but it was fantastic. And from the princess’ knees, the round one’s shorts have been pulled down to expose her little belly, which remains out the whole remaining fight. It’s yet another illustration of how this one is still very much a young girl, whereas the princess is trying very much to be a composed, young woman. It’s the semi-feral element that makes the little one so exciting though, and she manages to throw her opponent to the floor over and over again for the next few rounds, overwhelming her. When she goes to her corner, the Vaseline and oil all over her just accentuates the pudgy, roundness of her belly, shoulders, and face.

The corner for the princess is pouring some kind of red drink into her mouth between rounds, frantically pantomiming how she needs to bring her leg back before driving her knees in. Mua! They yell at her, which means it’s sloppy and indistinct; the leg back first will make her points clean and dramatic. Thai. It’s the same advice the little one needs, but she’s scoring all over the place with her aggression and the princess pretty much only has those knees. All the gamblers are yelling from their corner, over my head, to the princess’ corner, telling her what they want her to do. Her gym is local, so they’re yelling her gymmate and corner’s name “Pat! Pat!” to get her attention before shouting their instructions and chopping their hands forward to demonstrate what they mean for the knees. There’s nobody yelling to the round one’s corner. She’s winning, but she’s also the outsider, she’s not local. I love her even more. She keeps trying to pull her left bra strap up with her gloved hand and it just won’t move. I consider running over to her corner to fix it, my heart goes out to her as her 3 male cornermen don’t notice the strap or her irritation by it, but I decide to stay put because the westerner leaping into the corner to fix the bra draws way more attention than is necessary. A little boy about half the size of these girls sits down in a plastic chair next to me and just grins at me until I smile back, then he watches the fight and cheers when I cheer. I gained an ally. It’s us versus the crowd.

The last round starts and my champion knows she’s ahead. She must have been told to stay away from her opponent, to dance off or just toy, which is to go back. But she’s not very practiced in it at all and when the princess makes one of her very few attacks in the entire fight, the round one actually turns and runs away, kind of behind the referee. That’s not how you toy or dance off! I laugh without thinking and the gambler to my right, who has been going oi! Oi! for the princess’ non-knees the whole time, looks at me and we laugh together, both kind of shaking our heads. The round one gets her act together and manages to thwart the efforts of her opponent, even throwing her on the ground a few more times to secure her win. I’m yelling teep to let her know she can just defend, and the little boy next to me cups his hands around his mouth and yells teep, too. The gambler to my right is calling for more knees from the princess, but the two are just getting tangled up now. There’s no way to catch the round one’s lead. When the fight is over and they go to each other’s corners for water, the little one is a little hummingbird of energy and the princess is slumping her shoulders. It wasn’t close, but they both got better from it.

Back at my mat I’m excitedly telling Kevin about the fight, laughing about when my champion turned and ran away after being so dominant. Kevin laughs, too. Both girls return to their mats and their teams start removing their gloves. I give an emphatic thumbs up to the older coach of my champion and he smiles at me, picking up the black shoes and plopping them back on the cement so that his fighter can step into them, but she doesn’t. She’s already walking toward the bathroom barefoot with her mother, who scolds her for not having her shoes on (who are you, Britney Spears? Who doesn’t wear shoes in a public restroom?) and the little one steps her little feet onto my shoes as a platform before she can wiggle her feet into her shoes, heels folded down like slippers as she clops off to change her clothes. I kicked myself for not getting a picture with her.  

If you enjoyed this article, check out my other patron-only articles:

ARTICLES - Patreon Magazine

• Patron Only Articles - These articles are written specially for my patrons and are my attempts to expand as a writer. They are full of richer descriptions, and take on themes not always talked about in the experience of being a fighter. At least one is published a month, if not two.

Alley Tears: The First Time I Cried After a Fight In a Long While - it had been years since I had cried after a fight, maybe even ever, but something in me broke down after a loss to a World Champion several weight classes above me. read it here 

The Storm That Overtakes The Boy - Giving In | The storm within us, the storm outside of us. It is our choice. Or, this could be called "Learning to ride the donkey, and not look for the donkey." read it here 

Insisting On Left - The Space Between Pi and Kru | The story of how it is a delicate balance with my Kru when insisting on changing my stance to southpaw read it here 

Arjan Surat: The Unbreakable Breaker of Bangkok | Maybe the toughest, hardest man in Thailand. Arjan Surat is 63 and made of the stuff that feels like it's from 100 years ago. The unbreakable breaker. read it here 

When I First Met Dieselnoi: A Giant in my Soul | The powerful impression the legendary Dieselnoi made on me right from the start, a resonating impact that has made on me as a person. read it here 

The Perfection of Festival Fights in Thailand | A trip to the clinic to receive a boosting IV leaves me drifting through thoughts of belonging, as I listen to my kru talk about me to the nurse. read it here 

Cheet Yaa - "if there were no cuts it wouldn't be Sylvie" | A trip to the clinic to receive a boosting IV leaves me drifting through thoughts of belonging, as I listen to my kru talk about me to the nurse. read it here 

The Hurting Game - The Psychology of Hurt | Even though I've fought over 200 times being the one who hurts others, that the game is hurting, is still a psychology I need to embrace. read it here 

A Girl and Her Bag - the Intimacy of Work | Every fighter who has spent a long amount of time in the gym has to fall in love with their bag - how bagwork contains its own beauty. read it here 

Jai Rohn - My Story of Blood, My Pride and Stitches | My heart was racing, I was upset at my performance, and then there was the pain of stitches, more painful than any stitches I've had before. read it here